in this video we're talking about the things you need to know about bonaire's
National Park what is there to even do and see there and how do you experience
it and come with me I'm going to take you along on the adventure that I had
in the park so you can come up with your own itinerary and would I recommend it coming up
and if you're new here yo I'm Christine Lozada with where in the world is CL and I make travel
videos every week till we get up get out and go travel so if you like to travel consider
subscribing I'm going to be completely honest in that when I went to bonaire last year I did not
even bother thinking about going to the national park because it is kind of a trek to go there and
I have some caveats and a lot of helpful tips to help you decide if it's the right type of
itinerary to build into your schedule to go visit the park so let's start off with what
you should know about the park bonairs National Park is pretty big it takes up nearly the top
portion of the island or about one-fifth of it and it's 21 square miles but it's really
important to know that there's only a couple roads that go through it when I say a couple
I literally mean two and some of them are one-way roads that sometimes are pretty unpaved the park
is managed by stanapa which is the group that cares for the nature and parks on Bonaire and
the National Park is open daily from 8 to 5 p.m I highly recommend if you're considering going
go when it opens and the reason why I say this is twofold the first one is it's hot if you're
hiking if you're doing anything aside from diving or just waiting around and swimming
in the water it's really hot in Bonaire and so you want to go early in the morning to get the coolest
temperatures the other thing going back to that road I was talking about it's not exactly quick
and easy to get out of there so the park rangers are going through and kicking people out by a
certain time because it can take a long time to get out of the park and so going early so you can
actually enjoy it is really important and they don't actually allow people to come in after a
certain time so basically if you're doing the park go early the other thing to know about the park is
that it ain't free you gotta pay the 45 dollar per person nature fee to enjoy the national park and
if you're on Bon Air scuba diving you've already paid for that fee but if you're not it's required
to be paid per person as you're entering the park so you need your still up a QR code that's going
in the video in case you're not familiar with how this works when you pay your nature fee for
scuba diving you get a QR code so here we're just simply showing our QR codes and our IDs let's talk
about a general overview of what there is to see and do in the national park and then you can get
into the details and see what it's like as you travel along with me later in this video a lot
of people come here to just see the sites because it's really beautiful to just pop in for a few
minutes or longer if you're staying to sunbathe and hang out at the different beaches but just
seeing things like the blowhole for example see if it's blowing take some pictures it was not
blowing the day I was there and then there's just so many options to hang out at beautiful
places and sit on the beach but many people do come here for bird watching there are so many
beautiful unique birds from the flamingos that are around to the herons to parrots to there's just a
really long list if you're into bird watching this is a really great place for that and you can also
just expect to see a lot of animals around we saw tons of wild cats that were so fast
I couldn't get any videos of them but you'll see the turtle nests are all around you'll see a lot
of iguanas which be careful of your lunch and you can also come here for a ton of Adventure
there's mountain biking here there's there's hiking there's only a few Trails both walking
trails and hiking trails I've added links in the description below for one of the apps I love to
use which is all trails to give you more details about these hikes and then there's cliff jumping
the cliffs here are actually really really pretty but uh be careful because in some areas the waves
can be really strong and the current's really strong but cliff jumping is something if you
you are a bit of an adventurer and obviously snorkeling and Diving are also the things to
do here ooh and the museum so when you enter and come into the park you'll find the entrance where
you can pay your nature fee you can get more information about the park as well as the maps
Etc this is one of your only stops if you need a proper restroom but they also have a museum here
as well that you can kind of poke around in how about getting around this is an important
one because it's part of the reason why it's a commitment of your time and your itinerary in
Bonaire to go up to the national park there are only two roads you have the long route and the
short route and what this means is once you are on the long route there becomes a point in which you
can cut back through the park back to the entrance pretty quickly but a lot of the dive sites are be
beyond that short route area and once you pass it you're now on a one-way Road and committed to that
one-way road which is not paved coming the long way back that's kind of important to know because
even though the distance isn't very far it can take a lot of people an hour or more to get out
of the park if you're like me and you're driving along with somebody who drives like they're
driving like a bat out of Hill then you'll get out really fast a 4x4 is not required but I do
think a truck is required that's just my opinion I was there after some recent storms so it was you
didn't know how deep some of those potholes were because they were completely filled with water
but you cannot bring quad Scooters or anything like that not only can they not take the roads
but they're not allowed because those types of vehicles will disturb the wildlife in the National
Park ooh and a helpful tip and reminder there's nothing in the park in terms of amenities so yes
you have your restrooms at the beginning and maybe one more restroom out at one of the more popular
beaches but there's no shops there's obviously no restaurants but there's no gas stations so
make sure you come to the park with enough gas which when I was on the island we were paying
six dollars and 30 cents per gallon which is the same as what I paid in the Bahamas the previous
month I digress here's something that I wish I got to to see I wish I just got to see what the road
conditions were like and so I taped a lot of it and I added it to the driving video that I have
Link in the description below for me it's just helpful to see what it's like so I can decide if
I do or do not want to drive there but one caveat there were parts of the road that were like this
and it was just too hard to film so the gnarliest parts of the road are not in here but uh you'll
still see some stuff all right come and travel along with me because I had a great day seeing
some of the top sites in the national park and then going scuba diving but if you're getting some
value out of this video cheers that like button consider subscribing and tell me in the comments
below if you know anything about the national park and have helpful tips add them in the comments
below so we can all help each other and this is one of so many Bonaire YouTube videos that I've
made so make sure you check the description for tons more videos and for more resources all right
let's start with where we went first and I'm gonna do my best on the pronunciation but we
started our day at Playa chikitu at Playa chikitu it was a pretty quick visit because this is a spot
where there tends to be big currents and lots of waves so in other words swimming is not allowed
here and it is way too hot to not be in the water constantly in Bonaire in my opinion and so it was
a very quick visit to just look at the studying Cliffs that were there and to take a few photos
and so this is a great spot to just peek in take a look and then keep it going our next stop was the
blowhole but you know what it was kind of like and that's because it wasn't blowing and the
reason for that is Bon Air was having very unusual weather while I was there in other words it almost
never even rains on this island but we had some hurricanes passing very close by while I was there
so not only did we get a lot of storms but on the day I was there it meant there was very very
calm water which is very unusual for the northern part of the island great news for diving because
it meant it was significantly easier to get in bad news for the blowhole because I mean to get
a great blowhole you need those big waves crashing so that was kind of sad but still really pretty I
think what's cool is that on one side you have those stunning rock formations and boulders of
Cerro Grande and then on the other side you have the water and the blowhole but make sure you are
protecting your feet I was so careful walking around in my flip-flops because the Rocks here
are very very sharp and if you need some tips around things that you should pack specifically
for not just a beach location but Bonaire check the info and description below so you can download
that free printable pack list let's keep it going to the next stop which was Boca kokolishi and this
is the name of the shell that's all over this area and just put into perspective the drive
between Playa cheeky2 the blowhole and this next one we're talking about a couple minutes for each
of the stops so it's not long distances and the roads on this side are significantly easier and
better versus we'll get into that later but Boca kokalishi this area is named for Boca which stands
for Bay and then those shells that are all over the beach and this is the spot in my opinion of
all the places I saw that is the best place to go hang out on the beach bring an umbrella
because there aren't things that like there aren't trees around for natural shade bring an
umbrella I definitely recommend this as being the spot to hang out because the way that bay is
shaped you get really calm water and you can just chill and hang out and spend time in the water and
spend time on the beach and for this reason it's why we didn't end up doing our intended dive so we
headed next to Boca bartol which is the North further most dive site on the island but it's
not that nice for just hanging out on the beach and we had one person in our group who wasn't
diving today and so because there aren't tons of choices of the dive sites for also being great
Beach hangout locations I actually recommend Boca kokolishi as being the spot it looked better than
boca's locked by in my opinion we'll talk about that but Boca Bartolo is supposed to be a very
great dive site which is normally a really big challenge to get into and again because of the
odd weather we got really calm conditions so you can see from these videos it looks pretty good but
we scooted right along to the next dive site and we ended up choosing Playa fungi fungi fungi I'm
trying Playa funchi Final Answer Bunchy Bunchy if you're looking for a full description of what this
dive is like and what I saw make sure you check out my other video about scuba diving and specific
five sites around Bonaire and what's cool about this dive site and all the others is that the
park rangers keep it very clean there are trash cans and there's also picnic tables but one thing
to be aware of or there are lots of pretty cool looking lizards that are everywhere and they are
very friendly so if you are not keeping an eye on your food you might have a lizard in your
lap eating lunch with you so just make sure you keep an eye out for that we had a really awesome
dive here and if you want more info on this dive as well as a lot of the other dive sites I have
a dive specific video that kind of brings you through what the entry is like what to expect
Etc Linked In description below to check that out but our next stop was somewhere that's a
little bit more on the popular side and a lot of people love to go here which is Boca Selena and
slack by this is an area where lots of people hang out on the beach and it's kind of nice for
swimming around than just hanging out granted the beach area isn't that humongous it's still really
nice though and this Bay used to be one of the two main ports of Bonaire and the word that I'm trying
very hard to pronounce slag by slugby is derived from the word slack by which in Dutch is basically
referring to slaughter Bay in other words this used to be the place where they would Slaughter
the goats that they would send off to Curacao now it's picnic tables and restrooms so if you need
a proper restroom this is basically your only other stop in the National Park to be able to
access that but we stayed here and hung out for a little while but once you are in this area you are
in the land of no return in other words you're on the one-way Road and you're taking the long road
back so it's kind of a long and unpaved Road a lot of people take it really slow there's not a lot of
places to pull over to pass people so just an FYI in case you you find yourself behind somebody who
drives slower than you but it's a one-way road to get out very bumpy not paved I recommend a
truck to be able to go visit the national park and maybe find a friend that drives a little bit
slower than mine I get carsick easily like really easily the park does have a speed limit by the way
by the way let's talk about my recommendation is it worth going to the park only you can make the
right choice for you but this is the way that I think about it go to the National Park is kind
of a at least a half day Commitment if not more if I wasn't there to go scuba diving I I would
not have been happy about spending that much time up in the park and part of the reason is because
oh my gosh Bonaire is just so beautiful and what you see in the north is really unique and awesome
but isn't necessarily Superior to some of the amazing amazing views you get on the south part
of the island and so it was really cool to go see everything up there but things like walking
trails hiking I don't really think of Bonaire as being the place to do these activities I think of
islands like Hawaii for being really great for hiking not to say that there's nothing to see
but the terrain of Bonaire doesn't have as much to look at while you're hiking if you are are
a bird watcher though it's probably a good idea to go up to the national park or if you're into
mountain biking or if you want a little adrenaline rush and want to try cliff jumping but in terms of
just hanging out on the beach and catching some good views there are too many options Elsewhere
on the island come join me in my next video I talk about other things to do on Bonaire there's a lot
to do when you're not scuba diving come join me in that video and I'll talk to you about some of
the beaches I do recommend Klein Bon Air is not on that list and I'll see you over there ciao